1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electric connectors and more particularly, to a USB (Universal Serial Bus) connector, which comprises an electrically insulative housing, a set of first metal terminals integrally embedded in an upper base member and tongue plate of the electrically insulative housing, and a set of second metal terminals set in terminal grooves in the tongue plate and upper base member of the electrically insulative housing in a direction perpendicular to the insertion direction of a matching plug. The mounting design of the second metal terminals facilitates their installation in the electrically insulative housing by an automatic machine.
2. Description of the Related Art
Following fast development of modern technology, advanced consumer electronic products, such as cell phones, digital cameras, notebook computers, digital video cameras, MP3 players, PDAs, and etc., have been continuously created and are intensively used in our daily living for different applications. These advanced electronic products may use a transmission cable for transmitting photos, files, programs and other data. For the transmission of data, data transmission speed is quite important. Nowadays, USB (Universal Serial Bus) interfaces are most commonly used in consumer electronic products. USB 1.1 is currently used to power our mice, scanners, printers, MP3 and many other peripherals. USB2.0 is new standard that operates at 480 Mbps, about 40× times faster than USB 1.1 which currently works at just 12 Mbps.
FIG. 8 illustrates a USB2.0 connector according to the prior art. According to this design, the USB2.0 connector comprises an electrically insulative housing A that has defined therein a plurality of terminal slots A1, a metal terminal set including a plurality of metal terminals B respectively positioned in the terminal slots in the electrically insulative housing A, and a metal shielding shell C that surrounds the electrically insulative housing A. The electrically insulative housing A is configured for the insertion of a matching plug. Further, the metal terminals B are installed in the electrically insulative housing A in direction reversed to the insertion direction of a matching plug. This design of USB connector has drawbacks as follows:
1. Because the installation direction of the metal terminals B is reversed to the insertion direction of a matching plug, there is a space limitation during installation of the metal terminals B in the electrically insulative housing A. This design of USB connector does not facilitate installation of an extra metal terminal set in the electrically insulative housing A with an automatic machine to constitute a USB3.0 format.
2. Once an extra metal terminal set is added to the USB connector, the two sets set of metal terminal metal terminal set may interfere with each other during signal transmission.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a USB connector that eliminates the aforesaid drawbacks.